Eastern Red Cedar didn’t require a great deal of sanding and it was easy to sand regardless although the oil does tend to gum up the sandpaper quite quickly. Using a more porous abrasive such as Abranet helps with this problem, although even such net or mesh materials can gum as well if the oil content is high enough.
Eastern Red Cedar takes on a nice high sheen once sanded to a very fine grit of at least 800.
And of course, the smell in the shop is terrific! It occurred to me that, in fact, one could collect pure Eastern Red Cedar shavings to sell as ingredients for a sachet or even for potpourri blends.
However, for all the good experiences I had with Eastern Red Cedar, and despite what I had read and repeated above, my experience with finishing it was quite terrible. Where the finish first touched the wood it was darker than any other spot no matter what I did. Even pouring finish directly on to other parts of the wood did not result in the same dark appearance. The end result was blotchy and unattractive. In fact, I felt that a nice piece of turning was ruined by my inability to get a decent finish applied.
I considered using a spray lacquer to overcome this problem but I forgot this approach with additional pieces. Instead I used a wipe-on polyurethane only to discover that this can be a bad idea with oily woods such as cedar due to difficulties in drying, but I didn’t experience this problem and the polyurethane finish worked just fine for me. On later Eastern Red Cedar pieces I simply left them unfinished and this worked out best of all.
Honestly, I was hesitant to use Eastern Red Cedar again due to the difficulties I encountered in finishing it, but once I realized that it looks just fine when left completely unfinished, and that this has the advantage of allowing the fragrance to continue to be smelled, then I was happy to work with it more. In fact, I purchased a fairly large number of blanks to use in the making of Christmas gift bowls for a relative. The process of experimentation with multiple small pieces along with reading about the wood I was working with allowed me to make my peace with a wood that I was fairly unhappy with at first. There is a lesson to be learned therein for all wood workers I suspect as well as for most everyone in different but similar applications.
As always, I wish all my readers a great experience in whatever their wood working interests happen to be and to those who like working with lathes especially, do a good turn today!